Sunday, May 3, 2015

When it appeared in the London underground this frightening
image offended feminist blogger Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett.

She was not alone. The image so thoroughly offended many
other radical feminists that they felt obliged to vandalize it.

Eventually, it was banned from the London subway. Another
victory for feminism. Another defeat for capitalism… or better, another defeat
for women.

When she first saw the ad Cosslett penned a screed for The
Guardian:

It’s
strange, coming back to a world of advertising when you’ve been away. I just
visited Cuba, where there are no ads at all, unless you count the odd bit of
graffiti proclaiming “Socialism or death”. On my return, descending into the
dark, putrid bowels of London’s underground system was quite a shock. I hadn’t
realised quite how much my field of vision is occupied without my consent by
images and messages that want to sell me stuff (and, being a woman, it’s
usually based on claims that it will make me look better). The sheer volume of
it is alarming; one advert, for a makeup brand, showing a spread-eagled woman,
was repeated six or seven times, just in case the initial message (lipstick, I
think) hadn’t got through.

Compared to the Worker’s Paradise of Cuba, London looks to
Cosslett like Sodom and Gomorrah. Worse yet, she feels violated by images of beauteous women? Huh?

Cosslett wants to be recognized for her mind, not her body.
We would all be happy to do so. But, a great mind should consider that the
reason for the absence of advertising in Cuba is: there is nothing to sell.

Communist regimes have notably refused to allow women to
choose how to dress or make themselves up. During Mao’s Cultural Revolution all
women were reduced to wearing overalls and baggy jackets. Presumably, the directive came down
from Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing.

If one were in a churlish mood one would note that Jiang
Qing was no beauty herself. She must have felt threatened by visions of
feminine beauty, so she banned them.

In the West Naomi Wolf famously repudiated the beauty myth
in a bestselling book and Betty Friedan attacked the feminine mystique in a
better selling book.

If her model is Cubsa, Cosslett does not want women to exercise a free choice about
how they appear in public, even on the beach. She does not want them to study various looks in order to put together their own, freely.

While some women clearly prefer
not to be ogled on the beach, some do. Those who wish to attract male attention
dress accordingly. Those who do not also dress accordingly.

In Cuba, like Maoist China, no one exercises a free choice.

Cosslett understands this and immediately walks back the
implications of her initial remark:

Now,
I’m not saying I want “Socialism or death”. It’s hard to get cheese on toast in
Cuba, not to mention freedom of speech, but a visual field that is occasionally
unfettered by commercialised sexism is not too much to ask. Save for the odd
forehead cock, the politically motivated defacement of advertising is not as
fashionable as it once was.

Women who want to look good and who do what they can to look
attractive are therefore dupes of the patriarchy. If women did not like the
ads, there would be no ads. If women did not respond to the ads there would be
no ads.

Thus, the fault cannot merely lie with the capitalist pig
advertisers. It must also lie with the women who frequent Sephora, who study fashion
magazines and who spend their money on designer clothing.

Cosslett is offended that her delicate sensibility to being
constantly assaulted by images of comely women. For some reason, she believes that these beach bodies and other
versions of feminine pulchritude are trying to make her feel bad about the way
she looks.

How did it happen that today’s liberated women are so
self-conscious about their bodies? Could it be that they do not especially like
being women? Could it be that, having classed women among the most oppressed
classes in the history of humankind, feminists do not much like being
female. And they hate themselves for being feminine.

And yet, on the other side, when women prefer to be just like men, to have the life plan and careers of men, they might also suffer from an anguish that men will not see them as women. How do they go about making sure that men do not mistake them for men? By overexposing themselves.

Call it the internal contradiction of second-wave feminism.

Cosslett is offended and she called for the the ads to be banned. She wants
women and especially radical feminists to resist:

Ultimately,
brands such as these will continue their sexist advertising tactics for as long
as we let them. Let’s not let them. Consider this a call for resistance.

And
remember: the only thing you need in order to be beach ready, to bask in the
glorious sunshine and to swim in the wild saltiness of a seemingly endless sea,
is that marvellous vessel of yours. It belongs to you and you only.

Is she suggesting that women dispense with swimwear and walk
around naked on the beach? Hmmm. Does a woman make a body her own when she
rejects all adornment and ornamentation? Huh?

Isn't the purpose of fashion to allow women to look their best, regardless of the condition of their "marvelous vessel?"

Lizzy Crocker penned a response to Cosslett and to the
radical feminists who were defacing the ads in the London underground:

Perhaps
women have a bigger problem on our hands than sexist advertisements: We are
obsessed with body image, and instead of taking any ownership or responsibility
for our body-image anxieties, we blame society. We blame the patriarchy. We
blame advertising agencies for shaming us with images of slim-waisted, busty
models in their bikinis.

Indeed,
feminists are obsessed by the patriarchy’s policing of body image, but they do
the same when trying to prove a point.

Somerfield’s
toned but voluptuous body may seem ideal to some, but it shouldn’t be a source
of shame to those who didn’t win the genetic lottery. If it is, we should stop
blaming society and reassess our personal relationships with body image.

I don't know. There are a number of issues here, much more than marketers preying on women's insecurities.

Here's the big two I see:1) Public space is PUBLIC - filling public space with product propaganda is a crappy idea.2) Distortions - advertisements don't represent reality, whether its that 4" tall big mac hamburger (which is really 2") or that Model with a 26" waist that has been digitally reduced to 20", etc.3) Context - women generally don't walk down the subway in bikinis, don't walk down the street to lunch in bikinis, so having larger than life images of women's bodies in public spaces that are not proper places for such dress is well not proper.

If you go to a small town, not just dictatorship Cuba, you will NOT find the same sort of advertisements in public spaces as big city advertisers get away with, so it looks to me a slippery slope.

So there actually is a MIDDLE ground between totalitarianism and anything-goes and money-rules-everything world.

We as human beings have a right to object to money as the final arbitrator of what is done with our public spaces, not quite a democratic principle, but the reality of critical mass - if a few people speak up, others can agree, and limits can be placed that otherwise are never dared spoken.

So I can see its fun to judge the motives and sensibilities of complainers, but there are two sides at work here, and I really don't know anyone who really believe advertisers have no responsibility at all.

I can imagine the opposite side of "advertisement censorship", the libertarian belief that we're all adults and we can handle anything, and there's an opposite slippery slope of trying to not offend the most sensitive soul in any environment, but again that just shows there's two sides and the world is a big enough place that some places can be sincity, and some places can be for higher public beauty, and people who really need their fix of advertisements each day can know where to get it.

First, it's not pornography, soft or hard, but when have progressive feminists ever protested explicit works of art?

The feminists are waging a campaign to discriminate against women with an aesthetic appeal. It's envy. It's also motivated by dreams of political, economic, and social leverage. It's neither rational nor reasonable.

Ironically, envy is the emotion that motivated feminists to resurrect primitive pagan rites of human sacrifice under a layer of clinical privacy, so that they may pursue the secular profits of wealth, pleasure, and leisure through the indoctrination and exploitation of naive young women.

It all boils down to infantile psychology - mother, father, child, in which money, male arousal, and the image of iconic males and females are elements early childhood experience. This is true on all sides of the issue, the infantile capitalists rationalize anything and everything that "makes money" including pimping the images of women for profit.